As is known, handheld printers afford mobile convenience to users. Unlike their immobile or stationary counterparts, users determine the navigation path of a given swath of printing. In some instances, this includes random movement over a media. In others, it includes back-and-forth movement attempting to simulate a stationary printer. Regardless, successful handheld printing dictates that image information relative to the printer location be available at all times. However, all users do not navigate in the same fashion. Nor do they navigate at the same speed or orientation. For at least these reasons, handheld printers rely heavily on sensor inputs, such as those from optical sensors or encoders, for printing images. Yet, sensor inputs are sometimes limited in their capabilities and print jobs are interrupted due to lost or inaccurate printer location calculations.
In turn, if the printer location ever becomes lost, the printer can either quit printing or guess at location. If printing quits, users have incomplete print jobs. If locations are guessed, print quality suffers. In either, poor results are obtained. In the event printer locations are not completely lost, but simply inaccurate, print quality suffers because of inappropriately placed print patterns being deposited on the media.
Accordingly, there exists a need in the art for robust, multi-directional and random printing handheld printers having improved print quality. Particularly, there are needs by which handheld printers are able to validate or recalibrate positioning during printing and/or reacquire positioning to complete an interrupted or lost print job. Naturally, any improvements should further contemplate good engineering practices, such as relative inexpensiveness, stability, low complexity, ease of manufacturing, etc.